The name telegraphs Adam Liston’s vision for his space – it’s a bar that serves food, but boy, what food. So take a stool at the long bar under the spaghetti-tangle of lightbulbs and get stuck into Liston’s Japanese-accented food that’s the perfect complement to a cold Sapporo.

Such dishes as sticky-glazed chicken thigh yakitori, cooked over binchotan (a Japanese cooking coal revered for the clean flavour it imparts) are made for drinking, while the “katsu sando” – a Jap-Oz mashup of a crumbed pork sandwich makes friends with everyone and especially beer.

But Liston’s food isn’t just big-flavoured dude ‘tude – his treatment of tuna sashimi is at once elegant and refined. This is food for snacking and sharing, confit duck spring rolls and spiced prawn crackers filled with prawn meat and topped with a dollop of kombu (or kelp) mayo are few-bite taste treats, while bigger dishes – spanner crab with smoked dahsi butter, say, or spit-roasted pork with a wasabi gratin – are comforting winners.

The drinks list is sharp and sweet – beer comes in “hand grenades” (Super Bock cans from Portugal or Brooklyn lager) and “tallies” (perhaps a 500ml Kirin or Melbourne Bitter longneck), while the short wine list is studded with the interesting and esoteric at price points that encourage experimentation.

A bar with great food – Northern Light is a perfectly pitched addition that’s at home on one of Melbourne’s hottest eat streets.

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